36 Best and Worst Canned Soups & Soup Products

Canned soups are among the unhealthiest foods on the planet, but a select few are teeming with the right blend of nutrients to make for the perfect pick-me-up.

By
Olivia Tarantino

August 5, 2016

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Best & Worst

36 Best and Worst Canned Soups & Soup Products

Canned soups are among the unhealthiest foods on the planet, but a select few are teeming with the right blend of nutrients to make for the perfect pick-me-up.

ByOlivia TarantinoAugust 5, 2016

Just when you thought summer would last forever, you blink as a yellowed, crunchy leaf falls from a tree onto your face. Blink again, and basically every tree in the park has dropped its leaves—and you still haven’t unpacked your sweaters from storage. It’s no wonder many of us reach for canned soups in the first weeks of autumn; we need something to keep us warm!

The only issue? While canned soups feel like a bargain (a healthy, soothing meal for cents on the dollar!) these processed goods are truly some of the sneakiest diet saboteurs of them all. Even if your pick is low in calories and fat, it’s likely overflowing with sodium—some are over 1,200 milligrams—which is bad news for your gut. Constantly flooding your system with sodium can overwork your kidneys. As a result, the salt sits in your bloodstream where it attracts water, causing water retention and bloat, making you look five pounds heavier. Another problem is the addition of monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavoring agent that increases appetite and may cause migraines.

But that doesn’t mean you need to can the cans. Manufacturers have come out with countless waistline-friendly options that can warm you up without filling you out. Because many labels are more than misleading, we’ve done the dirty work and combed through the dozens of picks on your supermarket shelves to find Eat This-approved soups. We’ve listed many of the popular flavors, as well as ranked the building blocks that you’d use to whip up your own favorite recipe at home. Don’t have a killer go-to soup recipe yet? Make it one of these 20 Best-Ever Fat-Burning Soups—and take it easy with the salt shaker.

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Ingredients you want to see in your chicken soup: cooked chicken, chicken broth, peas, carrots, spices. Ingredients you don’t want to see: potassium chloride, maltodextrin, yeast extract, carrot juice concentrate, sugar, flavoring, xanthan gum, carrageenan, and a slew of others. Just because both options are low sodium doesn’t mean they’re both good for you. Pick up Pacific’s organic option over Campbell’s if you don’t want to sip on the same contents that are found in a food scientist’s test tube.

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After scouring the shelves for the best canned clam chowder, we came to the conclusion that your safest bet is to grab a condensed version. Ready-to-eat cans contain loads of preservatives, gums, and additives to retain that creamy, thick taste. With these condensed versions, you have to power to add as much milk, cream, and butter as you’d like. The best base is Bar Harbor’s, which is packed with protein (so you know there are a lot of clams!) and boasts a moderate sodium content. SNOW’s is low in protein, high in sodium, and full of corn syrup solids, soybean oil, and artificial color—which is also one of the 13 Scary Ingredients In Your Kid’s Lunch Box.

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Some of your best weapons against fighting fat are foods high in protein and fiber, and lentil soup has significant amounts of both. While Progresso lists tons of nitrites and chemicals in their ingredients, Pacific is packed with protein in this hearty, clean soup.

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Both options are low in sodium, but only one is worth eating: Amy’s Organic (which also make a pretty good frozen pizza). Minestrone soup is supposed to be teeming with vegetables and a rich broth, not injected with soybean oil, MSG, soy lecithin, and faux-thickening-agent calcium chloride like in Progresso’s option.

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Often a staple pairing with a gooey grilled cheese, tomato bisque is certainly a soup of comfort and tradition. Don't be fooled by Campbell’s new “Slow Kettle Style” offering, which serves up as much sugar as what you’d find in 66 Teddy Graham cookies. Wolfgang Puck’s organic offering contains home-pantry-style ingredients and nutritionals that won’t derail your diet. The same can’t be said for these worst pasta sauces.

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Because veggies are low-cal and full of hunger-quelling fiber, vegetable soup is one of the most waist-friendly meals around. Not to mention, it’s also chock-full of other beneficial vitamins and nutrients. But vegetarians beware: just because it says “garden vegetable” doesn’t mean it’s solely full of veggies. Campbell’s choice has both chicken broth, chicken fat, and beef fat. Progresso’s option is completely vegetarian and contains fewer carbs and less sugar than Campbell’s offering. Worried about sugar lurking in your food? Check out these 14 “Health” Foods Worse Than a Donut.

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Looking for some protein without the beef? The beans in these soups deliver big time. But even more so if you’re grabbing a carton of Pacific’s organic as opposed to Amy’s. They both offer options with Eat This-approved ingredients, but Pacific is lower in calories, sodium, and sugar, and higher in protein than their organic comrade. For more meat-free options, check out these 26 Best Vegetarians Sources of Protein.

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For a hearty soup, look no further than chili. Campbell’s Chunky Grilled Steak with Beans is surprisingly lean; There aren’t many kinds of soup on the shelf that can top a mere 200 calories per serving. One of the ones that can’t is the Steak House Reserve from Stagg, which racks up a solid chunk of your recommended intake of sodium for the day. Not to mention, the can is tinted with caramel color—an additive which may contain an artificial form of phosphorous that's been shown to leach calcium from our bones. Other foods with this nasty ingredient? Sodas.

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Sipping on bone broth is a great way to heal your gut. After animal bones are simmered in water, their collagen turns into a rich broth full of gelatin. "When we ingest it, it acts as an intestinal Band-Aid, protecting and healing the lining of the digestive tract which aids digestion and helps us absorb extra nutrients from the foods we eat," explains nutritionist Lauren Slayton, MS, RD. Besides the fact that Pacific’s bone broth is lower in calories and sodium than that of Kitchen Basics, we also like their addition of cider vinegar to the broth—which Slayton also recommends. Apple cider vinegar is another ingredient that will further improve your digestion thanks to it containing active enzymes. Find out which option you should grab in our exclusive report, Eat This, Not That! For 20 Healthy Pantry Staples.

Why bother with pots and pans when you could grab a mug of soup at the crank of a handle? Make use of your Keurig outside of your coffee habit and try Progresso’s Bistro Cup option. It may be higher in calories, but if you’re going to making as big of a dent in your sodium intake for the day as you would with Campbell’s option, you might as well be getting some well-balanced nutrition out of it. Progresso is loaded with a staggering 12 grams of hunger-quelling fiber and 11 grams of muscle-building protein, putting Campbell’s cup to shame.

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We know this soup comes in handy when you're short on cash and time, but we’re sorry to say that it’s usually a terrible nutritional choice. Nissin Cup of Noodles is loaded with appetite-revving MSG, bloat-inducing sodium, artificial flavors, preservatives, and inflammatory vegetable oils. If you’re really craving this college staple, try a new bowl from Simply Asia. Their ingredient list is shorter (albeit contains a few of the same inflammatory additives), but most importantly, they contain less oil-derived fat and 500 fewer milligrams of sodium. It’s lower in protein, yes, but that protein from Nissin comes from soybeans, a legume that is most likely genetically modified and tainted with carcinogen-containing pesticides.

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Don’t be swayed by the higher protein levels than that of Campbell’s; much of the macronutrient comes from the addition of soy protein concentrate rather than extra chicken. For your little ones, grab the lower sodium option from Campbell’s, which is a welcome addition to their organic line. Now that you’re set with soup, find out which boxed macaroni and cheese to serve using our guide, 25 Best & Worst Boxed Mac and Cheeses.

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If you’re grabbing a cup to go, use Campbell’s “Healthy Request” label as your go-to guide. This series of soup choices differs in that they’re lower in blood-pressure-raising sodium. Saving 570 mg of sodium—or about 25 percent of your daily recommended intake of sodium—is definitely worth the extra gram of sugar Campbell’s adds to make up for lost flavor (which only accounts for 2 percent of your recommended intake of added sugars).

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If you’ve ever examined a bouillon cube’s ingredient list before, you’ve most likely noticed that salt is often the first ingredient. That really shows in Knorr’s version, as just a half a cube racks up over half a day’s worth of the stuff, leaving you more than parched for a glass of detox water. Not to mention, it’s loaded with five versions of MSG, potentially trans-fat-laden hydrogenated palm oil, caramel color, artificial colors Yellow 5 and 6, as well as TBHQ—a corrosion inhibitor also used in biodiesel. Instead, grab a broth concentrate like that from Better Than Bouillon (bonus points for reduced sodium!). This stock is super-reduced until it’s just a paste-like product that’s packed with flavor. Our pick is made up of real chicken meat with natural juices, spices, only one source of MSG, and colored with turmeric instead of coal-derived artificial colors.

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The fact that Kitchen Basics offers an unsalted version almost was enough to earn them first place, but they also have one of the shortest ingredients lists of all brands and their production reflects traditional homecooked methods (i.e. simmering whole vegetables in water). Swanson’s—on the other hand—is made up of mostly vegetable concentrates and dehydrated vegetables (rather than the real things), sugar, and MSG.

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A staple for French onion soups, beef stock is a tricky product to purchase. That’s because store-bought versions are littered with flavor-enhancing chemicals and not much beef. For example: Knorr’s Beef Stock Concentrate contains inflammatory palm oil, four versions of MSG, sugar, two types of gums, and carcinogen-containing caramel color. If you don’t have time to make a stock at home (which is your best option), go for Kitchen Basics’ Original Beef Stock, which contains real beef stock rather than just beef flavor, vegetable stock, honey, salt, and spices—much simpler than Knorr’s. Plus, it’s a surprisingly great source of protein!

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When shopping for a chicken broth, look for low-sodium options so you can adjust the seasoning yourself. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with an option like College Inn that soars to almost 1,000 mg per cup. We also like organic stocks, which use chickens not raised with antibiotics or hormones. Otherwise, look for a short list of ingredients without any MSG, hydrolyzed protein, or yeast extract. College Inn contains two out of the three of these along with a type of trans fat, mono and diglycerides, as well as added sugar, vegetable juice concentrates (instead of real vegetables), and xanthan gum. If you can’t find Imagine, make your soup with Swanson’s Organic Low-Sodium Chicken broth. It’s a taste-tester favorite, but it was just a little too high in sodium for it to take our first spot. Speaking of making your own soup, whip up a bowl of one of these 26 Best High-Protein Soups for Abs!

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